


Flavors of the Yamani Islands

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Acquired Taste, Courtly Love, Cultural Differences, Etiquette, F/M, Food & Drink, Gen, Romance, interracial couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: For Roald, the flavors of the Yamani Islands are an acquired taste.





	Flavors of the Yamani Islands

Flavors of the Yamani Islands

As soon as Roald stepped into his betrothed’s quarter the afternoon following the Royal Progress’s return to the palace, he found himself blindfolded by a silk scarf. 

“Am I being kidnapped?” Roald raised an eyebrow and then remembered Shinko couldn’t see the gesture as it was obscured by the blindfold. 

“No.” Shinko grasped his elbow—Roald could feel her gripping fingers through his shirt—and he could smell the exotic, evocative fragrance of her favored orchid perfume clinging to her as it did to her silk scarf. Even in the bleakness of winter, she always had the spring aroma of blooming orchids or cherry blossoms wafting from her soft peach skin. “We’re playing a game.” 

“Blind man’s bluff?” That was the only game Roald was familiar with that involved blindfolding, but perhaps Shinko had in mind one from the Yamani Islands. After all, she was initiating him into more of her native culture every day. “If so, you should be aware, my dear, that it is customarily played outside.” 

“No, a tasting game.” Shinko coaxed him into a kneeling position on the pillows that carpeted her floor, and when he reached out a palm to investigate his surroundings further, his fingertips brushed against one of the low wooden tables on which the Yamani ate and drank. “I want to introduce you to the tastes of the Yamani Islands.” 

Cool ceramic kissed his lips and a strong, sweet odor flooded his nostrils as Shinko murmured into his ear around the scarf tied about his head, “Drink.” 

Roald sipped at the mysterious beverage before him and was overpowered by a fermented flavor that reminded him of dry white wines from Tusaine. The alcohol in the drink Shinko had cajoled him to sample swarmed to his head, dizzying him. 

“May I ask what you think?” Shinko asked as she removed the cup from his mouth, and Roald recognized his betrothed’s delicate Yamani fashion of probing for his reaction. “I have heard that some find sake overwhelming on the first taste. Fermented rice is apparently not for everyone.” 

“It’s powerful.” Roald smiled in the direction from which her voice had come. “It’s intoxicating, not unpleasant, though.” 

“Then it’s time you were exposed to sushi.” There was a gentle, teasing lilt to Shinko’s tone as she added, “If you’ve the bravery, that is.” 

“I’m a Conte. I fear nothing.” Roald regretted his boast when Shinko took advantage of his open mouth to shovel chopsticks bearing a foreign, circular patty onto his tongue. He tasted brine, vinegar, rice, and fish rolled into a disconcerting mix of wetness and dryness that felt raw on his throat when he swallowed. 

“Does sushi impress you, darling?” Shinko had taken the chopsticks away from his mouth, thank Mithros and the Goddess. 

“It’s very”—Roald paused to form a diplomatic phrase that would allow him to avoid offending Shinko while not offering a blatant falsehood since he wouldn’t dishonor his betrothed or himself by lying to her—“distinctive and flavorful. What are all the flavors in it, Shinko?” 

“It’s seaweed wrapped around rice soaked in vinegar, and, of course”—Shinko squeezed his wrist as if to brace him for a shock he had in his opinion already experienced when she popped the sushi in his mouth—“raw fish. Sushi was invented for the emperor centuries ago as a way of preserving the raw fish that had to travel so far before it could be served at his court.” 

“Raw fish?” repeated a nonplussed Roald, biting back the gagging reflex to vomit up the sushi that had been foisted upon him and contemplating how the sophisticated, elegant Yamani would ever decide that something as unclean and uncouth as raw fish was a suitable delicacy for the revered emperor who sat on their chrysanthemum throne. Then again, those from Tusaine insisted snails succulent. There was no accounting for taste across countries. 

“Yes.” Shinko tapped at his nose beneath the blindfold, and Roald wondered if Yuki and Haname were tittering behind their uplifted fans as they hovered—close enough to chaperone but distant enough to permit Shinko privacy while she met with him—in back of the thin paper screens the Yamani treated as walls. “Don’t wrinkle your nose at me. Tortallans eat raw fish too. When we were in Port Legann for the progress, I saw you slurping down oysters like a Yamani would soup.”

“I don’t slurp.” Roald had spent too much of his life being lectured on the finer points of etiquette by Master Oakbridge not to counter this calumny against his table manners. “In Tortall, we also consider oysters to be an acquired taste. Your sushi is a similarly acquired taste.” 

“If it’s an acquired taste”—Shinko’s lips fluttered like butterfly wings over his and he forgot every taste of the Yamani Islands except for her—“I would encourage you to acquire it.”


End file.
